War On… II

This is an experiment in combining a short poem, such as a haiku, with a photo. In the past I have separated the photo from the poem as I originally did with this haiku. A fellow blogger, with great generosity of spirit, liked the poem and suggested that I do it this way, even showing me what she meant. This change gave it a format that her site could easily use to reblog the piece to her followers. JoAnn’s helpful comments (the early, public ones) are here on the original post. I encourage you to see the great work that her site, awareandfair.com, is doing to increase public awareness of where the powerful would like to put us.

War On…

‘Tis craggy madness to think

That bombing is the cure

And not terrorism’s root

Loopy, Contagious Feedback

Cannot help thinking that tumors like ISIS are symptoms that have erupted from a much broader illness that has invaded the body of Mother Earth, whose nation-state “organs” are competing with each other for the scarcities: energy (nutrition), and water. That is, methinks, what these wars are really about and the cyclical feedback provided by each organ’s response amplifies the “other” instead of starving it.

Hatred for the actions of the drone-wielding US and the fundamentalist swaggerer Harper must play some part in this sort of horror. Nobel laureate, Malala Yousafzai, who has experienced extreme Taliban misogynistic cruelty, has the balance to see both sides of this sick situation and the courage to speak truth to power. More bombs and beheadings are not going to help in the long run.

Recently it came to me that the 2003 self-sacrifice of Rachel Corrie, killed by an armoured Israeli IDF bulldozer when she stood between it and a Palestinian home in Rafah, Gaza, and the twisted radicalized killers we see now here and in the Middle East are yin/yang symptoms of the same, fundamental, compulsive, societal psychopathy.

One destructive (perhaps irresistible?) response directed heroically inward, one outward. Both are cellular actors in extreme moral agony.

Navigating Between the Dark Places

For someone with a tendency to visit the “dark places,” it is important to know that you usually get to choose whether to go there or not. Unless you’re a three-year-old in Gaza…